Looking for a Hero

Victor Wooden is an amazing bass player. He’s played with people like Bela Fleck & the Flecktones (founding member) and Chick Corea. One of his albums, Yin-Yang, is on my ever-shuffling iPod, my endless playlist of some 8000+ songs. I’ve got a couple of his albums, but that’s not important. He’s a very inspiring man. His tag line on his website is “Music=Nature=Life.” More on Victor later.

I’ve been hibernating this week. I’m a seed or I’m being seeded, not sure that it really matters. I’ve been doing as little as possible and being as much as possible. And thinking. Been thinking a lot. Rumaging around in the things that have been on my mind and deciding what to do with them.

And I’ve been painting icons. I showed you one a while back. Here’s another one:

This one is called Looking West. It’s a meditation on getting older. My birthday’s coming up…like in a week…and it’s a big one and it’s been disturbing me. The act of painting this painting shifted something for me, of which I’m very grateful. One of her layers was a pouty, whiny, Goth girl. My inner child not wanting to grow up? Not a Peter Pan, but a Petty Pam. (Geez …Really? I wrote that?)

As I painted, I watched my whinny little Goth girl mature. Her expression softened, became more reflective. Compassionate.

West is a good place to be. West is where the Ancestors are. Shamans know the importance of the ancestors. They call on them, journey with them, for wisdom and aid. Some day I will be an ancestor.

Hopefully not too soon.

Still got stuff to do.

Wisdom to gain.

That’s the great thing about getting into your right brain. You can shift stuff and not really need to deal with spelling it out. I just wanted to feel better and I did, after working through this painting. Yay!

Here’s another:

This one is called Dreaming of Heroism. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to open my heart to heroism so I can see it reflected all around me. All these heroes–Superman, Avengers, The Arrow, The Flash, etc.etc. Seems to me the world is yearning for heroes. People with special powers to help us mere mortals solve…well…solve just about everything.

Do you know how many songs there are with “hero” in them? Or books? We like heroism, oh yes we do. What this world needs is more of it.

But…

What if we are our own heroes? What if I’m a hero and you’re a hero and that person walking down the street is a hero, and we just don’t believe it’s possible? We can’t possibly be hero material. We’re not enough.

Which brings me to Victor Wooden. On Yin-Yang. There’s a song called Hero. It was playing while I was painting the above and, suddenly, I started paying attention to the lyrics. “Everybody’s waiting for the hero, when the hero is in everyone.”

Don’t you just love serendipity?

And mellow Victor Wooden inspired me to paint this final painting I’ll share with you. It’s called The Inner Hero.

3 thoughts on “Looking for a Hero”

And re your birthday, from being well on the other side of that one: before this birthday? You chop wood and carry water. After this birthday? You chop wood and carry water. Trust me, you won’t feel any different; you’ll still feel like the same inner age you were the day before, even years later.